Einstein Analytics: Calculation without Code by Rikke Hovgaard

When you start with Einstein Analytics, the first time is spent learning how lenses and dashboards work and how to explore your data further maybe even how to get your data sets into Einstein Analytics. But there is more to the tool than just pretty graphs that facet with each other. Soon you will get the question to show the percentage change from one month to another of cases, pipeline or bike trips. This is not something that typically is in your dataset especially if you get the data directly from Sales Cloud, so what do you do? Well, this is where compare tables come in handy.

Compare tables are a lens type that allows you to grab measures and dimensions from your dataset but also calculate your own measures. Out of the box, it comes with a series of commonly used calculations like “% change period on period”, which quickly allow you to get more insight, but of course, you can also create your own calculations in the builder. Once you have your calculations done, it used to be that you were stuck with this table on your dashboard, but with one of the later releases, it is now possible to convert your table into a graph. Let us have a look at how this works by finding the percentage change of trips month on month. I am using data on the San Francisco Bike Share [find the data here].

The compare table magic

First, open up the dashboard where you want to add your compare table. In the step overview to the left click “Create Step”.

And choose your dataset, I am using my “trip” dataset.

I now see my count of rows in a bar chart, but I want to change this to be a compare table, which I will do by first clicking the table icon in the upper right corner and then the compare table icon.

Now I want to group my data by Start Date. Since I want to have a month on month comparison I will choose Year – Month.

As I want to have the number of trips I am going to keep my measure as Count of Rows. But since I will be doing a comparison I need to add an additional column. Click on the small arrow next to “Count of Rows” and then “+ Add a column”.

Now you should have two measures that are exactly the same. We will use the first column (A) for the actual number of trips the given month and second column (B) will be the percentage change from the previous month. In order to do this we will need to modify our columns, so again click on the arrow next to “Count of Rows” for your first measure and then click on “Edit this column”.

I will rename the column A to “Trips #”, click “Apply and then click the next arrow to move to column B.

I will call my column B “Change Month over Month %”. For my calculation, I will click on “f(x)” and choose “Period Over Period”. Per default, the correct column (A) and calculation type (%) are chosen. Finally, click “Apply” and “Close”.

We are not all done with our step yet. We do have the calculation done, but we have two measures in the table and I only want one for my graph. Einstein Analytics have the option of hiding columns in a table, which means I will keep my calculation but only show the measures I want to use. In order to this click on the arrow next to the measure “Trips #” and click “Hide”. Now the step is finished and you can click “Done”.

Now add a chart widget to your canvas and drag your new step onto the widget. You can now modify your chart to fit the data you are showing.

That’s it! Very simple way to calculate on the fly and present it nicely in a graph. No need to code or modify your JSON.